30.05 2016  On Sunday 5 June at 3pm, the Pretoria Symphony Orchestra will bring together the music of two composers, Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner, each in their own way revolutionary.

The concert, which takes place at the ZK Matthews Hall on the Unisa Muckleneuk Campus, kicks off with the overture Wagner’s early opera Tannhäuser. The opera is based on two German legends, that of the medieval minnesinger and poet Tannhäuser himself and the tale of a song contest held at the Wartburg, a castle that was built on a precipice overlooking the town of Eisenach in Thuringia, Germany. It depicts the struggle between spiritual and ‘profane’ love, and the final redemption through ‘pure’ love.

The overture opens with the noble theme of the famous ‘Pilgrims Chorus’ but then changes to the fast and exhilarating ‘Venusberg’- music of Act 1, Scene 1, which is a celebration of life’s earthly pleasures and caused quite an uproar at the time it was first performed. The overture ends in a massive triumph of the pilgrims theme in which the orchestra pulls all the stops.

The second work on the programme is the intensely moving ‘Wotan’s Farewell’ of Act 3, Scene 3, of Richard Wagner’s opera The Valkyrie. It is the second of the four operas that form his monumental cycle ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’. The cycle revolves around the conflicting desire for power and the redemption of pure love.

The story involves dwarfs, giants, mortal humans and gods, all of them are susceptible to the very human vagaries of greed, envy, ulterior motives, deceit and treachery. In this scene Wotan, the head of the gods, has confronted his favourite daughter and Valkyrie Brünnhilde for disobeying his orders to not get involved in the course of human affairs, which she did out of pure compassion. He has to punish her by banishing her from Valhalla and taking immortality from her with a gentle kiss on her forehead. The orchestral music, singing and words are integrated by sweeping melodies based on a multitude of ‘Leitmotivs’ combined by pure genius, involving all the instruments of the orchestra.

Whereas it is widely recognised that Wagner’s new ideas of an integrated orchestral sound, operatic singing, drama and stage work revolutionised the concepts and practices before him, placing Anton Bruckner on the gallery of revolutionary composers may seem distinctly peculiar. More often than not people, especially outside German speaking cultural scene, are inclined to perceive him as a rustic bumpkin who created overly long symphonies all sounding more or less the same.

However, nothing could be further removed from the truth! Bruckner used the base of the traditional romantic orchestra to develop new orchestral textures, colours, progressing harmonies and rhythmic patterns. These he cast into the broad spans of gothic-like arches while evoking the fabulous landscapes of hie homeland Upper Austria, with its flowing alpine foothills, towering mountain peaks and deep, lush valleys. His writing involves all the available orchestral forces equally, that is strings, woodwind, brass and timpani, to create sweeping melodies building to towering climaxes juxtaposed against sudden periods of calm and introspection.

Bruckner’s sixth symphony is his shortest and for some reason not often performed, even in countries where his music is well established. He himself described it as ‘Die Sechste ist die keckste’, that is ‘The sixth is the sauciest’.

The overture to Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser probably is heard more frequently in South Africa, but ‘Wotan’s Farewell’ and Anton Bruckner’s sixth symphony certainly are not.

The Pretoria Symphony Orchestra invites all lovers of music to enjoy their concert and the very rare opportunity to experience these superb works by composers truly revolutionary for their time.